Ask HN: Being harassed by Odesk client, What should I do? - <AUTHOR> Hello Guys, I am a Freelancer on Odesk.com and yday I was contacted by a new client on Odesk to work on project but before letting me on details, he wanted me to sign this agreement(http://pastebin.com/qm9JMk7m) sent via the id email@example.com to my email id. Please carefully read lines 53-75.
I replied the client asking about these foolish clause in the contract and he said he just wanted to filter out the potential developer and wanted to see who paid attention to the details and he will send me the revised version.
Now he replied to the same email(the email with previous contract) with new contract where line 53-75 replaced by a para which said I cannot disclose any of the info given by the client about the project. Now what yahoo(client)/gmail(me) did was, it nested the old contract inside the new one as it was reply to the thread by the client but while replying to the email for agreeing, I manually removed the nested part from the reply which had the old agreement and added this line "I accept the terms and conditions stated in this email and this email only.".
After this, the client said since you have agreed to the terms, you will have to buy a control panel access by paying him via paypal to which I disagreed post which he started threatening with legal consequences since I have signed the agreement. He kept threatening me by Odesk messages. The odesk message thread: http://i.imgur.com/yxgOXgB.png
I reported this to Odesk but I just got a reply from them asking for screenshot email where client was asking for money, I replied more than 10 hours ago and there has been no response from them.
Now my doubt is, Am I legally safe here or is this some noob online trying to con me?
also, He has my email id and basically anyone can get my complete address and phone number using my email id from whois databases since I purchased few domains with same id. Is it possible to get that data removed?
What should I do next? <comment><USER2> "is this some noob online trying to con me?"

Yes.

He wants to get paid (ideally, get paid $175 for this "control panel"). He will hound you to the exact extent you engage and indicate he might be able to get money.

In order to actually get any money by suing, he would have to pay a lawyer and disclose his identity, both of which he is very unlikely to do. If he did he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

He might very well threaten to contact whomever he can dig up contact information for that's related to you & tell them you're a bad, bad contract- breacher, but that's about the worst he can do. And why would anyone care? Every message by him makes him sound like an obvious scammer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. That's a completely idiotic and labor intensive scam. The guy said he was from India though, so this makes some sense. The annual median per capita income in India is $616 [1], so he only needs to try to force 4 people to pay the $175 during a year and he's ahead of the game. Perhaps 1 person per quarter will be frightened of his threat to "make a report to Pratap Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan, 302033, India" for "possession of stolen goods".

Obviously, you don't need to do anything to defend yourself here, other than block and report him for spam on Skype and to Odesk for fraud. No lawsuit is forthcoming, as the annual median income in India would cover approximately 90 minutes of time with a reasonably qualified attorney.

[1] [http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy- policy/indi...](http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/india- s-median-per-capita-income-lowest-among-brics-gallup-113121600968_1.html)

Edit: If it hasn't been flag killed by the time you read this, Masonlove (the scammer involved here) has made his way into this thread and it's quite entertaining. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9411900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9411900)

<comment><USER4> > The annual median per capita income in India is $616

...Oh my god.

Stats like this make me realize I have no idea how lucky I am to be US born.

<comment><USER5> It shocks me that you found out today that the average Indian doesn't earn that much.

<comment><USER4> I figured it was low. I just didn't think it was as low as three digits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So I googled parts of their "contract" it is copied and pasted from different 101 articles on business contracts from all over the internet.

Line 1: [http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Legal- Contract](http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Legal-Contract)

Line 29-43, 77-89: [https://www.sba.gov/blogs/contract-law-how-create-legally- bi...](https://www.sba.gov/blogs/contract-law-how-create-legally-binding- contract)

Line 49: [http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Contract](http://www.wikihow.com/Make- a-Contract)

Line 51: [http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/business-contracts- forms/ho...](http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/business-contracts-forms/how-to- write-a-business-contract.html)

And so on and so on. Every single line in that contract is stolen from a 101 article about writing contracts. Seriously, check any single one by putting them in quotations on Google.

<comment><USER7> What does that matter as far as how to handle this situation going forward?

<comment><USER8> It's just proof that this contract isn't thoroughly thought out, and wasn't hand-written by anyone with an actual law degree.

<comment><USER9> Or 5th grade English skills?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do not do business under any circumstances with anyone who attempts to get you to sign a contract that looks like this.

Also avoid oDesk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Already avoided Elance and Freelance, not sure I have any other option left.

<comment><USER11> Same here, got tired to try to find anything good (pay & work) to work in with Elance and Freelancer.

Then, searched HN and found something I think is worth the try, have a look at: [https://gun.io/](https://gun.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, someone from gun.io suggested the same on this thread, already applied, now waiting for approval, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Do not take legal advice from the internet. If you are concerned about legal trouble and can afford to do so, find an attorney in your area that you can consult with for an hour on this. (They might appreciate the laugh.) Even if you can't afford to do so, make a few calls. You might get lucky and find someone willing to do a brief consult for a little less. Also, attorneys happen to specialize in writing scary sounding letters that have the unique ability to make nuisances go away.

2\. Give oDesk some more time. It may take them a day or two to retrieve their head from their ass.

3\. Set up a filter to route this fool's messages to your junk folder where it belongs.

4\. Consider this an education in the quality of customers that oDesk cultivates, and think hard about whether or not you could make more money for less trouble elsewhere.

5\. I'm unfamiliar with Indian law (again, you should be talking to an attorney, not HN), but there may be some state agency you can contact regarding this guy. I once made a nuisance write an apologetic letter and then go away forever by contacting my state's attorney general's office and filing a complaint. It took all of less than two hours of my time and no money for the nuisance to receive a scary-sounding warning from the state.

In my totally-not-a-lawyer opinion this guy is a scammer and I'd simply ignore him and not lose any sleep over it until and unless he started demanding my attention elsewhere, in which case he would get my full and undivided attention for as long as it took to make him run away.

<comment><USER13> > 3\. Set up a filter to route this fool's messages to your junk folder where > it belongs.

Perhaps not. While the OP should not respond to these messages, these messages could turn out to be vital evidence if the OP (or, highly unlikely, the scammer) decides to go the legal route. So my advice would be: do _not_ delete these messages; keep them somewhere safe so they can be used later if needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have already archived all the emails and set filters to automatically move all the emails from this id to a folder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work at oDesk and am very sorry to hear you had this experience. Clients should never request any type payment from a freelancer, including payment to start a contract or buy software. For your protection, all financial transactions should take place on oDesk. The best thing to do in these situations is exactly what you did: contact the oDesk support team so they can investigate and advise you on the best course of action. Please note that the team does need some time to do a full investigation, however I've escalated your ticket internally and you should receive a reply soon. For future reference, this article from our help site has some tips for identifying suspicious behavior: [https://support.odesk.com/entries/23110778](https://support.odesk.com/entries/23110778).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for looking into this, The scammer has been posting similar jobs on odesk continuously and I can see he has been interviewing many freelancers(harassing them). So if possible, please try to block such scammers from the site.

I am only using odesk after leaving elance and freelancer.com due to poor client's quality.

Dont you guys verify the client's identity before allowing them to post jobs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You are 1 of thousands he's fishing at this point. Its a dragnet. Just go dark and he'll move on to those who keep responding to him. (Unless you'd like to have a little fun stringing him along... "Ok I'm trying to pay you now. What's this 'pay-pal' thing you mentioned? How do I scan the check?")

</comment><comment><USER16> Just let it go. I would say there is an extremely remote chance this scammer will pursue. Just wait for the oDesk team to come back, but even if no, keep your calm and carry on.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes that's how I want to play this out but It was just today I realized that how much personal info is out there in open, just want to know if there is any way to get rid of the whois info on multiple databases?

<comment><USER6> Even if you could (and you can, via WhoIs Gurd and WhoIs privacy-like services) they would have likely copied that stuff down already.

I'll also add that most courts in the West will laugh this lawsuit right out. Judges use common sense in small claims, and a contract requires a "fair trade," this fails both of those tests.

Plus they could file in India and you can ignore it. They cannot really file in the US (or anywhere else) because flights and filing fees would cost more than they claim you "owe."

Overall this legal threat is just moronic. It is obviously a scam (or a second scam after you caught the first scam text and called them out on it).

This is the same as people from India calling from "Microsoft" because your computer has "viruses." Or the "IRS" because you "owe tax money."

<comment><USER17> It seems that the OP is from India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Legally it's worthless. You could sign this contract and it's not that much difference from slavery, which is illegal. The logs you own are more than enough to prove the bad intentions of your client. Even if this nonsense is somehow legal, your client would spend lots of money filing a legal action against you. Unless you live in India, you're more than safe.

<comment><USER19> > Unless you live in India, you're more than safe.

I have no idea why you think India is some kind of legal Wild West where anyone can send you a contract and sue you because you said "I agree to some of these terms" over email. Even if OP is in India, contracts in India are typically written out on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamped_paper](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamped_paper), and often require initials of both parties on any correction. Something like this would be thrown out of court way before going to trial.

The person who is trying to scam OP is obviously an unintelligent scammer, regardless of the nationality of either of them. OP should plain ignore him, and keep the screencaps and emails just in case he is stupid enough to file anywhere.

<comment><USER20> I don't think that's the implication of that comment -- I think the implication is that the costs of pursuing a lawsuit against an international party _and_ successfully collecting damages are too great (in both time/effort and money) that, for something this tenuous, there's no chance the scammer will even try.

In India, the scammer could try. Someone trying to sue you can still cause you to have a very bad day, even if they get thrown out of court fairly quickly. Or at least, that's true in the US -- maybe India is less of a legal Wild West than the US. :)

<comment><USER19> > ...the implication is that the costs of pursuing a lawsuit against an > international party and successfully collecting damages are too great (in > both time/effort and money) that, for something this tenuous, there's no > chance the scammer will even try.

That part wasn't linked to the grandparent comment's last sentence, it seemed to me like a line glibly tossed off -- but okay, I'll give them the HN "best intentions" benefit of the doubt :)

Getting a _legitimate_ case to court in India is a fairly Sisyphean task. Getting one as ridiculous as this might be considerably worse, and would probably incur frivolous litigation costs¹ if it ever actually went to trial.

But yes, IANAL and all that -- just trying to point out that OP has very decent solutions available even if he is in India. If he is not, then yes, as you pointed out, there is very little reason for concern.

[1] [http://www.legalblog.in/2011/11/exemplary-costs-on- frivolous...](http://www.legalblog.in/2011/11/exemplary-costs-on-frivolous- litigation.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Report this scumbag to oDesk. I've been working exclusively on oDesk for two years and I've never had the misfortune of dealing with these type of people. I'm sure it's bad for business and oDesk will immediately terminate his account.

Save your messages, screenshot stuff.

But don't worry this twat won't do anything because he's probably hiring a ton of unsuspecting people with the same con. If 1 in 50 actually pay him it's worth it to him. He won't actually sue you.

</comment><comment><USER22> > There is no exasperation date on this legal document

Pardon me while I giggle.

<comment><USER23> Hah, that has to be joke, right? Perpetual exasperation ... then again, maybe not.

<comment><USER22> Given the English language fluency displayed so far, I'm pretty sure exasperation is exactly the word they think should be used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why would you even agree to anything after seeing that initial agreement?

I doubt that can be used against you anyway, but why did you think it was a good idea to continue?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure, I knew he was a scammer and wanted to see how this plays out :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is amazing. It is about as poorly written as a 419 scam. I cannot believe how infantile it sounds.

Take it for what it is: a hilarious scam attempt by someone who will have to move on to their next "victim" rather than spending time and money harassing you.

</comment><comment><USER26> > In addition to ensuring both parties are in agreement on the terms of an > offer, the second element that ensures a contract is legally valid is that > both parties exchange something of value.

I highly doubt the scammer even understands his own contract. (This section of the contract was copy-and-pasted from an SBA _blog_ post)

\---

I'm wondering, though: what are the OP's options if he does reside in India?

</comment><comment><USER27> I am impressed how the person scottydelta talks about found this post within 6 hours without their name being mentioned in text. Maybe it was the techworksC email.

Additionally the point about saying 50% of all your profits going forward would mean for every $40 per hour you make you would owe them back $20. HAH! Yes, ignore them, move on, don't make the mistake in the future.

<comment><USER28> Either that, or someone with a lot of time to waste just felt like registering and pretending to be him for some trolling...

HN has certainly "done the needful" to his comments though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont think he is the real Masonlove as he, here in this message talks about a skype call which I never had with him :P [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9411916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9411916)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> At most this Odesk based dispute will go into arbitration, Net-Arb is the service used by Odesk.

The price of the arbitration is $300 last time I checked (I had a competing service to Net-Arb a few years ago).

The arbitration is ex aequo et bono, meaning "according to the right and good" or "from equity" i.e. it's the opinion of the arbitrator that counts, not any specific law.

Even if you get some foolish arbitrator that writes an arbitral award in favor of this scammer, they'll still need to have it recognized and enforced in courts that have jurisdiction where you have assets.

All of this will never happen for a petty amount of $175. Just ignore this and move on.

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't worry about it. From the pastebin it says to sign it in the email, not on a .doc or .pdf, so it's not legit. From the rest of the info you provided it's definitely a scam so just delete and forget.

</comment><comment><USER31> lol @ being sued in India. From what I've quickly glanced over, it looks like you're dealing with a scammer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I realize that, But just wanted to be sure, I know how legal system works in India especially when it comes to online frauds etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sorry to hear about this. It seems like he's asking you to violate the oDesk TOS anyway, so I'm sure you're in the clear.

At [https://gun.io](https://gun.io) we avoid this by thoroughly screening clients and developers before making introductions, and by having a dedicated team of account managers who are able to make sure that projects go smoothly for both freelancers and clients. We'd love to have you apply!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, I have been looking at alternatives to odesk, elance and freelance but couldnt find a a market place as big as them. Anyways, I have applied to gun.io, lets hope this works out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Do nothing. This is a con man.

Though if you want some entertainment, your harasser is on this thread as "Masonlove" and appears to be just as entertaining as you described.

</comment><comment><USER34> Fake your own death.

Kidding.

I would do these steps. 1) Don't contact this guy any more or reply to any messages. 2) Ignore whatever BS non-contract that exists. 3) Not worry that it's only been 10 hours from Odesk. It's not a secret agent command center it's just Odesk. 4) Read Masonlove's comments in this thread and try to have a good laugh. Seriously, they're hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER35> Nothing.

Do nothing.

You're not at any risk, just stop engaging in any communication. Don't read the crazy things you might be sent, certainly don't think there is any legitimate threat. Maybe followup with an oDesk report, but don't put too much effort on it.

Move on.

</comment><comment><USER36> Run. Run fast.

This is someone who is playing games and obviously doesn't value your time. If you get burned, all the warning signs are there. At the very least, this person will waste a lot of your time.

</comment><comment><USER37> You should contact oDesk support. They'll close his account.

</comment><comment><USER38> Don't worry about it. In India electronic agreements are legally binding only when legally registered/identified digital signature is involved.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sort of like version of Nigerian scam, in order to get billions from deceased king of persia you just need to send them $500 to pay for taxes.

Just ignore.

</comment><comment><USER40> It seems to me that this person has taken a lot of time researching about contracts. Much of text is filled with legal definitions rather the actual terms of agreement. No lawyer writes a contract like this (at the very least I've never seen a contract written like this) .The intention clearly is to give off the impression that it was drafted by a lawyer, which I highly doubt.

Also the quality of language in the definitions and the quality of the language in the actual clauses does not match. Which could mean that the definitions were simply copy/pasted from internet but when it came to writing the actual stuff the person making the offer had nowhere to turn to.

So what you fear is that the client is asking to to fulfil your promise to the contract that you linked. Reading the contract and the context that you have given, here are some of the things that I've noticed. My responses are with respect to the Indian contract law :-

_"and any designing or development you own or have or will have rights to, any that you have previously created or will create in the future ..."_

This is void since it is not legally enforceable. A clause must be specific as to what the promise or the consideration for promise should be. What this clause says is neither specific nor foreseeable.

_"in return for you services and full agreement to the above terms in condition I will be allowing you to purchase a website with control panel through us or the company we use"_

Okay this was funny :) So the author of the contract reads up on contract law and decides to draft one. He puts forward some absurd clauses and says to himself

"Gee what should I give the other party in return for consideration of the promise?"

And he gives you the _right_ to buy stuff for him. This is like when you go to a fruit vendor and pay him Rs 40 to buy a dozen bananas and he says "Brother since you have given me Rs 40 to buy the bananas I give you the right to buy apples from this shop". Won't work in a court of law.

_"You also give up all rights to file a suit again my self or anyone involving me , you will give up the right to lawyer up and file a suit against me or anyone I associate with."_

This clause is void. The right to file a law suit can not be taken away in any case by anyone. It does not matter if you have agreed to do so in a contract or not.

First the promise required is not specific. Then there is no consideration of promise. On top of that the person is taking away your right to appear before a court of law. All three clauses are void. The contract is void. You have nothing to fear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed info :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The comments by masonlove! Roflmao

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd be interested to see how oDesk customer service responds to this

</comment><comment><USER43> This is humorous.

</comment><comment><USER44> Ignore and sleep well. Clearly a scam.

</comment><comment><USER45> Do nothing..

1\. Yes , contract can be legal bind even word but if there where not transaction involve.. might be ignore.

2.Even got contract,sometimes client would delay and give lot of excuses.

3\. All my freelance work i wanted to bind with contract and i have legit company to avoid many nonsense client.

4\. Did i been harassed like you, Yes.much worst. I had to close my Facebook account.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hi. I would like to personally say that the guy who is posting on this statement is a complete dumb ass. We have purposly added that into our emails we send to see if the tech reads detail we put a faulty name , uneducated grammar and made sure the contract had articles which help void any given authentication of it anyone reading the document we know right away that we it is none legit and voided from so many flaws however it's steaded serval times to message us if you don't understand. Anyone who is educated knows that no enslavory contract is valid ? Correct.

Whch means we see who messages us . If you do nonot we do not even bother with you. We take a long time to respond because we are busy.

If you have fell into this stupid post you are on a kindergarteners social level. Please report us we would love to show much of an uneducated tech you are.

Regards Our company

<comment><USER47> The punctuation mistakes you make in this post match those in the crappy sections of the contract.

<comment><USER48> "Masonlove's" posts ITT need to be upvoted not downvoted :-) They must be seen to be believed.

And, FWIW, kindergarteners have more self-awareness than this.</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Free PDFs on MIT Press Open - <AUTHOR> There's a bunch of MIT Press books [0] that are free (open access) to download for your own intellectual curiosity.<p>Just navigate to the book you'd like to read, click the Open Access tab and you're good to go.<p>[0] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/mit-press-open <comment><USER2> Ignore the "open access" in the page header.

1\. Go to [https://mitpress.mit.edu/mit-press- open](https://mitpress.mit.edu/mit-press-open)

2\. Select a book

3\. Scroll to below the initial summary info until you see links for: \- Overview \- Author(s) \- Open Access

4\. Click Open Access

5\. Click "Download PDF"

<comment><USER3> I can't seem to find the "Download PDF" link, in "Open Access", I only have links to view on PubPub.

Are only some books available for download?

<comment><USER4> Even so, I checked one of the ones on PubPub and it says the license is CC-BY- NC-ND; the Creative Commons FAQ says that format shifting is allowed even for a No Derivatives license (from what I understand), so you could presumably convert it if you want to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recommend downloading PDF of the highly regarded classic 'The Art of Prolog' by Leon S. Sterling and Ehud Y. Shapiro (2nd ed, 1994). [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-prolog-second- edition](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-prolog-second-edition)

</comment><comment><USER6> OP is going to have to disambiguate what it means to "click the Open Access tab and you're good to go". It's easy to assume that means there be a PDF waiting there, or at least a link to get to it. I see nothing of the sort in Firefox or in Chrome browsers. There's an open access symbol but that's not an active link. My test case is this: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/category- theory-sciences](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/category-theory-sciences) linked from the top link

<comment><USER7> I opened your URL in Chrome, clicked on the "Open Access" tab, the clicked on "View HTML" under that, then clicked "Click to preview" under the thumbnail of the cover at the left. The "preview" seems to contain the full text of the book.</comment></comment>


The eternal antitrust case: Microsoft versus the world - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/the-eternal-antitrust-case-microsoft-versus-the-world.ars

<comment><USER2> Facebook is definitely this generation's Mircosoft. Another great white shark in the ocean of the web.</comment>


The Perfect Interview Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/the-perfect-interview-test-guy-kawasaki <comment><USER2> W-T-F. Guy must've been all out of ideas and facing a deadline whilst staring out a NYC penthouse for this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a joke, right?</comment>


PSN database with 2.2 million credit card details up for sale? - <AUTHOR> http://www.neowin.net/news/psn-database-with-22-million-credit-card-details-up-for-sale

<comment><AUTHOR> The most baffling thing is the data apparently includes CVV2 numbers, which are never supposed to be stored by merchants.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_security_code>

<comment><USER2> Did not Sony state they did _not_ store any CVV2 numbers?

<comment><USER3> I'm in a bar, drunk, and this was my exact reaction. This is what I remember reading on, I think, arstechnica. When will the lying stop?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't bother selling mine, guys. It's already cancelled.

And if Sony was responsible and contacted everyone, with big bold letters saying their credit card info was stolen, the rest of them would be cancelled, too.

Instead, they waited a week and a half before emailing, and then only said that cards -might- have been taken and they couldn't tell for sure. The only responsible thing would have been to assume they were and inform your customers of such.

I've seen people saying that because it 'might' not have been stolen, and it's a hassle to get a new card, they aren't going to bother and just wait to see if any fraud happens.

Ugh.

Sony actually should do 1 step better and contact the credit card venders directly and get them all invalidated. Just to be safe. It'll be bad PR, but with all the other bad PR lately, it's a drop in the bucket and at least errs on the side of safety for a change.

</comment><comment><USER5> About 3 or 4 days before the PSN went down, my credit card number was compromised, and handful of small 'test' transactions were made from the mainland US (according to my bank).

My bank spotted the fraudulent transactions and cancelled the card.

It might be a coincidence, but Sony did have that card number on my PSN account.

I guess I'll find out one day when someone bit torrents the database.

</comment><comment><USER2> Similar to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2496317>

</comment><comment><USER6> I doubt someone would sell all 2.2 million at once, because it's very easy for the banks to say "all the cards that have ever used playstation network are compromised" and simply deactivate all of them all at once. UPDATE accounts SET flagged = 1 WHERE id IN (SELECT id FROM accounts, transactions WHERE transaction.merchant = 'PlayStation Network'). Done. All 2.2 million numbers useless.

(This is a lot of customer service / re-issuing work, so it's probably a last resort that the banks will only do when they're sure that they are not deactivating non-compromised accounts. So if you are the people that broke into Sony for this info, you are probably going to want to sell only a small percentage of card numbers so that the banks' risk analysis does not decide on the above strategy.)</comment>


Show HN: Commits.io - Create a poster from your code and logo - <AUTHOR> https://commits.io <comment><USER2> Suggestion: Write a standalone tool that does the code extraction step, so someone can run it on their private repository (or checked-out code) and generate the data dump you need.

This mitigates some of the security issues have with granting access to live repositories, as well as opens your service up to people who have code hosted on anything besides Github or Bitbucket hosted services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't expect this to blow up today. But security was considered from day 0.

\- Each time a poster is generated the repo's code is fetched and destroyed.

\- Your auth token is cleared after each session.

\- For maximum security use Gists!

You can create a private Gist[0] and add all the files you want into it. After that you can just use the Gist's ssh/https url under the "Embed" menu/dropdown.

This will allow you to specify exact files that get cloned.

[0] [https://gist.github.com/](https://gist.github.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The service looks awesome and I really want to order some posters for my company. However, I can't grant the kind of access that is being asked for to a private company repository.

The idea of allowing a someone to have the ability to administer/transfer/delete company repositories so that we can print some neat posters is rather unsettling.

<comment><USER4> Why not grab some files/snippets from your project that you deem safe to share and drop it into a secret gist?

<comment><USER3> I hadn't noticed that I could provide a gist. Just saw that it had Github/Bitbucket integration and went to try that out. I was disappointed when I saw how much control I'd have to allow in order to use that integration and didn't go back to see if there were other options.

Aside from being more thorough in my inspection of the site, it might help to make that portion of the site more obvious given how many people came to this thread and made the same general comment about security/permissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very similar to Litographs - [https://www.litographs.com/](https://www.litographs.com/)

I expect they developed some algorithm to color/format lines correctly per some image in this case, so a little more flexible...

</comment><comment><USER6> I want to order a poster but I don't want to give so much access to our company's github. It would be nice if there was an alternative route where I can just copy paste a bunch of code and then start the generating and order process.

<comment><USER7> I was thinking the same. I can't really tell for sure tho, is it read only access or what?

Edit: Never mind, I figured out how to see what access it was. Btw, Holy shit! Why all this access?? "read and write all public and private repository data"

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, this is all the control Github provides on their scopes. There is no read only for repos scope. The only scope it asks for is 'repo' and email as an identifier[0]

[0] - [https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes](https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I graduate from college I'm going to glob all of the code I've ever written for side projects and all of the code I've done for homeworks together and print it out via this service.

Should make for a very nice piece of paper that I'll put next to my other piece of paper (my degree). I'm pretty sure I'll be more proud of this then I will of my degree.

<comment><USER9> Totally stealing this idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would love a cheaper "download" option. Would be cool to use this on a shirt or mug or maybe a wallpaper.

<comment><USER11> You can download the image (4320 × 3240) by right clicking on your generated preview and choosing "Save image as"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really neat!

I uploaded an image of a gopher and it automatically detected the shape and drew it on the code.

[http://assets.avi.io/screen- shot-2016-11-15-f4w73.png](http://assets.avi.io/screen- shot-2016-11-15-f4w73.png)

This is impressive. Would love insights on how you did that.

<comment><USER13> I think it's simple, every character is a pixel, you just have to change the color of the characters to match the same pixel on the uploaded image.

It's a great idea btw.

<comment><USER14> It is not so simple. The characters are not the same colour as in the image. Look at the eyes and the nose for example. It seems to be doing a more advanced kind of image feature detection.

<comment><USER13> It is, just the white pixels on the image are black text on the poster, and the same with black pixels, so Gopher's eyes (and the other black parts) disappear.

There is a Light Text option, with that white pixels are grey so you can see the eyes :)

[https://s18.postimg.org/4jg01zwux/gopherposter.jpg](https://s18.postimg.org/4jg01zwux/gopherposter.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At REVSYS we got a print made when we launched the refresh of python.org. It's pretty awesome, can definitely recommend this service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Would love to see a picture of it hanging if you have time time: supportATcommits.io

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great job - ordering was streamlined and the process was really smooth -- I was expecting the generated image to auto-update when I was making selections, but I can imagine that is process intensive so it makes sense how it behaves. Looking forward to our poster.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is absolutely awesome! I would have loved to do it for the company I work for, but...I'm not comfortable with giving access to a private repo.

That said, _did_ do it for an open-source project I wrote, and it's great!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great. Here's the poster[0] for the Core Infrastructure Initiative's [1] Best Practices Badge [2]. Zoom out by clicking "-" at the top left.

[0] [https://commits.io/posters/a9a5c093686](https://commits.io/posters/a9a5c093686) [1] [https://coreinfrastructure.org/](https://coreinfrastructure.org/) [2] [https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Enhancement idea: RegExp field to blacklist/whitelist files in the repo (I tried to do this with my PhD thesis but the central part of the image is the boring .bib file). Still, pretty neat!

</comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty cool.

Would be interesting to know how much revenue you are making so far.

<comment><USER21> Pretty cool indeed. But I guess one problem is that if everybody starts using this, then it loses its coolness factor.

<comment><USER22> Word clouds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the old Apple posters with C & Objective-C code on a black background. Does anyone have a link to those? We had them hanging in some of our university classrooms.

<comment><USER24> Interested in seeing a picture of one of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congratulations on the enormous amount of money you have made from this website. I wish I had a website like that so I could just retire....

</comment><comment><USER25> +1 on the security issue. I won't give an "unknown" company access to our private github repo. Besides that: love the idea!

</comment><comment><USER26> neat idea 50$ though? Ill just implement it myself and print it myself. The price tag is a bit high

<comment><USER27> You may want to consider increasing your hourly billing rate.

<comment><USER14> Alright, smug one. Might be a student.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I notice half of my banner is various GPL 'LICENSE' files... I still like it :)

<comment><USER29> You can select which type of source file(s) to include down the bottom and regenerate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> this totally blows my half assed idea out of the water! [http://coderte.es](http://coderte.es)

<comment><USER31> The site looks great. Did you use any libraries to make it look like a command line?

<comment><USER30> sure.. i used this great repo called jQuery.terminal [https://github.com/jcubic/jquery.terminal](https://github.com/jcubic/jquery.terminal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Doesn't seem to work with my GitHub repo.</comment>


The 10,000 Most Popular Topics on the Internet By Domain Count - <AUTHOR> http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/5-the-10-000-most-popular-topics-on-the-internet-by-domain-count

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

This is a follow-up to a recent post on HackerNews called Calculating The 5,000 Most Frequently Used Domain Name Prefixes and Suffixes [1]. This analysis makes use of those prefixes and suffixes to calculate what the most common topics are by domain count.

If you have any questions about the analysis or results, I'd be happy to answer them.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3864501></comment>


Newegg and friends crush a patent troll - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/newegg-and-geico-stop-patent-troll-that-sued-dozens-over-forms-on-apps/

<comment><USER2> This creates so much good will from me towards Newegg. It's why I pretty much try to buy as much gear from them as possible.

I'd also add, they've added a tremendous amount of information in the PC parts buying process, from really in-depth videos from manufacturers talking about their products and how they differentiate different tiers to the reviews and relatively pain free rebate and sale system.

If they ever added a "I'm building a PC" and it cross checked items for compatibility to streamline the purchase process (so you don't buy the wrong kind of RAM or video card or whatever) they'd absolutely dominate the custom PC parts industry.</comment>


Gay Rites Are Civil Rites - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/08/gay-rites-are-civil-rites/ <comment><USER2> Rites? Really? As in rituals?

So you're going to conduct gay rites on someone? How is that not a literal crime like sodomy?

Or did you mean Rights, as in the Bill of Rights?</comment>


Ask HN: Im not the greatest developer, but I'm very good at shipping products - <AUTHOR> What is your definition of a good balanced developer? And how would you go about achieving it? <comment><USER2> My personal criteria

\- go as fast as you can

\- maximize likelyhood things wont break

\- keep things organized for reusability in the future

\- use popular technologies so that you can all "speak the same language" when collaborating with a team

\- always strive to be capabale of anything.

I do it by building stuff</comment>


When hermit crabs confuse plastic trash for shells, 'avalanche' of death happens - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/12/05/what-happens-when-hermit-crabs-confuse-plastic-trash-shells-an-avalanche-death/ <comment><USER2> That is atrocious. I know in some communities, there is an effort to clean up beaches polluted by the world; do these places have such a program?</comment>


Microsoft linked to BP oil spill - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1724792/microsoft-deep-water-oil-spill

<comment><USER2> To be fair, it could have been something like bad ram causing the freeze up and crash. Microsoft can't be responsible if the hardware isn't maintained. It's all speculation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have these clowns never heard of redundancy? Did these clowns not think to fix/replace a system that had, quote, "been seizing up for weeks"? or stop anything risky until it was sorted?

</comment><comment><USER4> Slightly unfair to Microsoft. Anyone who relies on Windows for anything important wants firing and banning from being involved in data acquisition ever again. It even tells you in the EULA.

<comment><USER5> It's been years since I've looked at the EULA this closely (I know...), but IIRC the EULA specifically cautions against if it does not outright preclude using standard Windows in such a critical, hazardous application. This may be one one the sections that is WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITALS.</comment></comment>


The Functional Programmer – Keeping Repetitive Strain Injury at Bay [video] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lunarlogic.io/2018/the-functional-programmer/ <comment><USER2> Having been through several bouts of RSI-type injuries, here's my advice:

1) take up active hobbies that strengthen vulnerable body parts. Rock climbing did wonders for keeping my De Quervain's tendinitis from returning.

2) stretching is an enormous part of recovery, if you've already developed tendinitis.

3) fix your posture. I didn't realize that I was craning my head forward over the years to compensate for poorly corrected astigmatism.

4) vary your environment. A convertible sit/stand desk along with an adjustable monitor arm should allow you to change up your position many times per day.

5) never spend extended periods with your arm extended to the mouse, resting your arm's weight on your wrist. This is probably the single worst thing for your wrists (aside from impact injury).

6) invest in a decent mechanical keyboard. Consistent, light key resistance is more important than ergonomic layouts, not that I have anything against properly executed ergo.

7) WALK! Get up, stretch your head back and your arms up. Go for a walk around the block while maintaining proper posture. No staring at your phone. It does wonders to reset your body and would have saved me years of pain if I'd done it regularly.

<comment><USER3> This is a great list. One thing I want to add is that when I was suffering from tendinitis, I wasn't able to really start building strength until I got cortisone shots. They're a temporary solution but they can buy you the time to be able to function and start exercising. It's a very powerful tool.

<comment><USER2> Yes. Also, consistent, responsible use of anti-inflammatories. For example, one 200mg ibuprofen three times per day, evenly spaced, seemed to pay off more than 400mg in the morning and 400mg before bed. And, of course, you have to remember that you're still injured.

To anyone suffering RSI, get into physical therapy. They'll teach you valuable stretches and exercises that will be useful for the rest of your life.

Probably the single most important thing is this: try to deal with injury before it becomes chronic. If your wrists seem sore or you get tingling sensations, seek help before you develop an injury that's going to take months or years to heal!

<comment><USER4> > Probably the single most important thing is this: try to deal with injury > before it becomes chronic. If your wrists seem sore or you get tingling > sensations, seek help before you develop an injury that's going to take > months or years to heal!

The problem I have with this is that I don't feel much difference between regular fatigue and pre-chronic-injury kinds of damage. Typically by the time I can even identify the discomfort as non-transient, I'm already in for weeks/months/years of recovery.

<comment><USER2> I'm going off the top of my head and only from personal experience here, but for me the difference is primarily about joint vs muscle pain. Joint pain is almost always bad. If you just did a ten mile hike and you don't normally do that, a couple of days of knee pain is normal. If you're mousing for your usual work day and your wrists hurt, it's a problem.

I have managed to cause instant tendinitis where it basically felt like intense muscle pain, but that was a rare shock-load situation.

Most fatigue is just a drained feeling, followed by some muscle soreness for one to three days. Soreness in tendons and joints is almost always a problem, in my experience. If it doesn't clear up in about three days of relative rest, you're heading into chronic injury territory.

<comment><USER4> > Most fatigue is just a drained feeling, followed by some muscle soreness for > one to three days. Soreness in tendons and joints is almost always a > problem, in my experience. If it doesn't clear up in about three days of > relative rest, you're heading into chronic injury territory.

In my experience, if it doesn't clear up in three days, I'm already there (and usually also have _no fucking idea_ what I did to cause the injury).

The more I look into this, the more I suspect that in my case it's a sensory deficit, i.e. I literally can't feel the initial pre-injury discomfort that trains most people not to move/position their bodies in ways that acutely damage joints or connective tissues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had emacs pinky when I was in grad school. Now I have a job and I'm still pretty concerned about my RSI. Here's a few tips I've used, and a few things I'm considering:

Things that have worked well for me (cheap solutions):

\- Use a keyboard that doesn't encourage you to 'bottom out' to execute a key press. I used to use a keyboard with scissor switches that I think just encouraged me to press the keys harder. I switched it out for a cheapo mech keyboard with MX brown switches and I think this helped a bit.

\- Remap common keys like control to other keys that can be easily hit with your thumbs. Currently I map control to left alt and backspace to right alt. Makes a difference for me but ymmv. Try not to hit so many keys with your pinky. For example, when I need to hit return, I make an effort to use my ring finger instead.

\- Got a lumbar support pad for my office chair and car seat. I have a lower back and hip pain. This helps with the sciatic nerve painI have had since college.

\- Use a very tall wrist rest. The cheap ones don't really elevate your wrists much, but find a quality one that provides an inch or more of lift. If you have a desk with a keyboard tray, lower it to comfortable position.

\- Lift weights. I spent a year in grad school lifting hard with a buddy three times a week. Did wonders for my back pain. I would love to find a new lifting partner and get back into it.

What I'm considering (expensive solutions):

\- A standing desk. I'm seeing a lot of people in my office switch to these and I want one.

\- A split keyboard with lots of thumb keys. This is always on my mind now and I'm trying to decide between a kinesis and keyboard.io.

<comment><USER6> I just use opposite keys. Like right control and right alt with right hand, and the keys to the left of the keyboard with left hand.

As soon as I switched to this opposite side leader key, my emacs pinky went away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My anecdote is I switched to a vertical mouse[1] and a split keyboard[2] and it solved it for me. I went from constant dull throbbing pain and fear of career death to not even thinking about it anymore. Yay!

[1] Evoluent [2] Kinesis Freestyle2

<comment><USER8> Split keyboard did it for me too. It allowed me to correct the whole posture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's quite comical that in an age where companies are willing to pay 100s of thousands for their top knowledge workers wrist issues bring all that heavy caliber thinking to a screeching halt.

<comment><USER10> so i wonder if its like sports... they aren't paying for workers to be or stay healthy. like a football team, they are paying a handful of superstars until their bodies are used up and broken, then they can discard them for the next generation.

<comment><USER9> Definitely. I mean they are ultimately workers.

Well cared for workers tend to be more productive workers though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For personal health at the office, I think the biggest bang for your buck is to buy a water bottle that takes minimal effort to drink from (I've found those green sport Gatorade water bottles are prime) and sip continuously throughout the day. You will feel amazing from all the H2O alone. You will be forced to get out of your seat multiple times a day to visit the restroom. You will will get more facetime with people in your office from walking more. And walking more gives you more opportunities to fill up your water bottle. The virtuous cycle!

</comment><comment><USER12> I use KT tape all the time on my forearms and shoulder/neck to keep repetive strain injury away.

<comment><USER2> KT tape is a scam. You're not going to affect tendons and muscles by applying colorful tape to the surface of the skin, it's absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, thanks for all the comments here! It's a gold mine of tips

</comment><comment><USER14> Avoid Diablo-esque games if your hands are susceptible to injury.

My brain likes picking up loot, but my hands don't :(</comment>


Ang Lee Is Embracing a Faster Film Format. Can Theaters Keep Up? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/movies/ang-lee-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-new-york-film-festival.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I think they are making a big mistake tying high frame rate to 3D. The only way to see the Hobbit films in HFR was the 3D versions. But HFR all by itself gives an almost 3D realism to film, something I noticed when I saw Douglas Trumbull' Showscan demo at 60fps in the 1980s. I have friends who would enjoy the HFR clarity but who don't have stereo vision and won't pay extra for uncomfortable glasses that do nothing for them, just to see a film in HFR. It looks like some theaters will have Lee's film in 2D HFR, due to technical limitations, so maybe that will give them some audience feedback on whether HFR can stand alone. I'm also suspicious of the gain in quality going from 60fps to 120fps. I saw a demo of HFR at Siggraph a few years back and the change from 24fps to 48fps was very clear. Going to 60fps was less of an improvement, but for fast action scenes it was noticeable. I'm not sure that 120fps will be worth the extra expense, but I'm interested in seeing it.

<comment><USER3> A 120fps master will be useful for 3d at home where the technology relies on rapid alternation between left and right eyes, so the effective fps per eye will be 60.

Although, now that I think about it, it might be useful for theaters, too, since they're using two polarized source frames per projected frame. It depends if they're counting the combined, projected frame as one frame or as two source frames to reach their 120 fps claim. Actually, out of curiosity, I read up on how Real 3D does it, and they use alternating, polarized frames out of one projector, which would be 60fps per eye.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the home 3D TV market pretty much dead at this point?

<comment><USER5> Yes, Samsung is not making any 3D TVs for their 2016 models (which are out now) [http://www.cnet.com/news/3d-tv-is-now-more-dead-than- ever/](http://www.cnet.com/news/3d-tv-is-now-more-dead-than-ever/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The film is considered a risk partly because the hyper-reality lent by the > cinematography technology [viewing at 3d, 4k and 120fps] could be unsettling > to viewers. "Test subjects that have seen some footage have commented that > 40 minutes after seeing battle footage, they're still shaking," Ben Gervais, > a production systems supervisor on the film, told Variety in April.

This sounds like pure marketing drivel. Just take a look at video games and the disparity of consoles being (largely) locked around 30 fps and PC that can reach 100+ fps. While a higher framerate can give the appearance of smoother gameplay -- which is disputed beyond a certain threshold -- it never makes it "unsettling" or more realistic.

<comment><USER7> Video game framerate and movie framerate are not at all comparable. Movies have true natural motion blur.

<comment><USER8> > _Movies have true natural motion blur._

In addition, researchers have performed tests and there's something about films being as slow (motion blurry) as they are that contributes to them seeming like fiction. 24fps is the slowest you can run a film with lip sync—any slower and your brain has trouble associating the sound with the imagery.

18fps is the slowest you can run a silent film and still distinguish continuous motion.

30fps and you start to lose the "dreamlike" effect, and at 60 fields per second (television), it's lost completely.

<comment><USER9> Last point made me cringe so hard a few years ago when all TVs were to have their (100|200)Hz mode so every movie now looks like straight out of Pixar. Hyper smooth, hyper real and hyper fake all at the same time.

<comment><USER10> That's interpolated though - I wonder what it'd look like if you had an actual 200fps source (and the ability to play it)

<comment><USER9> True, I forgot that. I think I've seen one 48fps (maybe first Peter Jackson effort to push this) film and the results wasn't different from interpolated 100Hz TVs, the "movie" looked like a professional documentary. Crisp and dead.

<comment><USER11> I saw the first Hobbit in 48fps and that was the first time I ever wanted to walk out of the cinema - was literally unpleasant to watch, my brain was telling me that everything is playing too fast and that audio _should_ be desyncing from video, but it never did. Maybe I would get used to it if all films were made in 48fps, but I certainly can't recommend it after that one experience.

<comment><USER9> Some people say we reject non 24 fps out of ingrained habits, I don't subscribe to this point of view. Nobody ever complained that a movie failed its purpose because it was filmed at 24fps.

Tangent: so many movie are lacking in terms of set, direction, pacing, scenario.. why do people believe tech is the variable to improve...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 120 is the least common multiple of 24 and 30 (NTSC rounded to nearest integer). Perhaps this is a method to capture enough source material to generate all popular framerates.

<comment><USER13> TV in Europe is 50hz

Things get sped up, slowed down or played back with jitter. It's not great. Older devices (DVD/BD players) used to change framerate automatically. Newer devices (streaming) seem to default to 60hz with an obscure Settings menu to manually change it. Nearly everyone ends up watching the content in the wrong frame rate :-(

<comment><USER14> So do LCD monitors have a setting for 50Hz refresh? Or how does that work? I've only seen 59/60Hz (and sometimes higher).

<comment><USER15> TVs, not monitors.

<comment><USER14> They seem sort of interchangeable? If I stream a EU show is it gonna suck on my laptop?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So cold and lifeless! Film should be 24fps, flickery screen, celluloid only. It helps if the celluloid is of such poor quality that it's grainy as all get- out and the light melts it and it snaps halfway through the picture. Now that's REAL cinema.

</comment><comment><USER17> In fact, plain HD at 120 fps looks way better IMO than 4K at 30 fps. Motion blur in ultra high resolution is _not_ compelling...

</comment><comment><USER18> After the hobbit's special effects were shown up at 48fps, reviewers blamed the high framerate for the unreal effect. Few screens were assigned to the HFR versions of the sequels. Hopefully this movie will make higher framerate movies more popular.

<comment><USER19> What I read about the 48fps Hobbit movie was that the indoor scenes looked very fake, but the outdoor scenes of New Zealand looked _fantastic._

The same article made some comments about mixing fps in a movie, one approach like the Wizard of Oz (real world B&W, magical world in color). Another approach might be one aspect of the move (like a character) appearing at 48fps while the rest is in 24fps. Lots of room for experimentation in the next few decades.

<comment><USER20> It's funny that British television for a long time (up until the HD era in fact) did this on historic, technical accident: indoor/in-studio cameras they used filmed at a much higher fps than outdoor/on-location cameras for cost and technical reasons. I remember noticing it the most in shows like Keeping Up Appearances and Fawlty Towers. Fawlty Towers especially tended to use outdoor shots for more of its slapstick, playing into the lower framerate for comedic effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish everyone would start 120 FPS/4K(downscaled to 4K). That would be great.

</comment><comment><USER22> If they could just focus on producing good movies than focusing on technical details.

Just take the Dumb & Dumber movies for instance. IMO, one of the reasons the new movie isn't as good as the old is due to the image quality. I don't need dull colors in FullHD quality, it kind of ruins the feel of the movie...</comment>


"Ads Inc." used "rental" Facebook accounts to scam Boomers out of millions - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-subscription-trap-free-trial-scam-ads-inc <comment><USER2> The amount of money being passed around, even for just the sake of "renting" a regular user's FB account, is astounding to me. It's even more than what I remember those scammy ad networks would pay you to install an ad-filled menubar on your computer, back during the dot-com era:

> _Taken together, documents, recordings, and other information provide an > unprecedented, detailed inside look at how black hat affiliate markers > weaponize targeted advertising, fake news articles, and overseas labor to > exploit Facebook on a massive scale. Burke's Facebook account operation > eventually became so large that Ads Inc. began selling surplus rented > accounts and pages to other marketers for $800 per Facebook login. > Meanwhile, the people whose account logins were being sold were paid $15 to > $30 a month._</comment>


Would you work with micromanaging boss, no salary, and all your work thrown away? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shlang.com/post/38977434/would-you-work-with-micromanaging-boss-no-salary-and <comment><USER2> That's nothing. Look at the job I took:

lifetime exclusive contract, you can't work anywhere else, not even moonlighting

$0 salary and no equity (you're supposed to be compensated in satisfaction)

no benefits other than being told that "everything here is a benefit"

no possibility of promotion or raise, ever

no job description: just do what you're told

no office of your own, in fact, nothing of your own, ever again

all work ever done for any other employer must be forgotten forever; it's useless here

everything you do is wrong

everything the boss does is right

if you want to work on any personal projects, you have to make it appear that it's really for the boss

micromanaging boss complains about everything every 7 minutes

strict hours: 24/7, always on call

lovely seating, but only for company

the work is boring and demeaning, like taking out the garbage and cutting the grass

all your comfortable clothes get thrown away

you have to drive, even though the boss tells you where to go

you have to wear an employment symbol everywhere so that other prospective employers know you're already employed

you can only go to hacker news when the boss is out...oh wait, hold on, Hi Hon, you're home! I'm in here, on the internet, on diamonds.com...<alt-tab> (bye)

<comment><USER3> while amusing, I think that in this culture "marriage" has become synonymous with "bad marriage" as evinced by the attitude of this post and the portrayal of marriage in the media. Specifically, I think that too many marriages (and relationships in general) involve a dominant/submissive relationship rather than one based on equality. I think the media promotes this idea that either you are in charge or they are with no room for something in between.

<comment><USER2> Oh lighten up. It's a joke for crying out loud.

<comment><USER3> I know, and it is funny. Just couldn't resist getting my armchair sociology pokes in. Bad Habit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And lets not forget the physical and psychical terror from your colleagues. And the depression, apathy, and disgust with life. It was fun sometimes but between 7 and 15 years of age, i was pretty miserable in school, and i was bored because i knew everything and didn't find any challenges. But from the bright side i can now live my life with out fear of oppression because i know it and know that you shouldn't be afraid of it. The adult world is also full of bullies and its nice to know that you were trained the hard way for dealing with them.

<comment><USER5> Yup. Bullying is one of the worst features of the abysmal society which exists inside schools.

Plus the piece doesn't go very far in describing the micromanagement (that would give away the punchline). What kind of boss tries to control what you eat and what clothes you wear? Who demands you raise your hand before you can go to the toilet?

More fundamentally, the job wasn't chosen and there was no interview. In other words, it's slavery.

We don't see it because we were slaves ourselves for 12 years and therefore we feel it must be right. Otherwise we'd be forced to conclude that lives are being borrowed without permission.

<comment><USER4> I'm not entirely against school, when i was 14 i changed schools and in my new class there were mostly girls and a few nerds(you get to be there after two exams) so it was pretty good. I actually enjoined and was exited. I started learning literature, philosophy, history and was pretty good at that and it was fun(i sort of did the "philosophical poetic teen who wears only black" thing for a while) Well after i got in to programing it got really boring, so thats my problem now, if i want to go to college i have to study chemistry,biology, and a lot of other stuff which i might be interested in, but are not anywhere near my favorite disciplines. So i would describe it more like a waste of time after you get near enough to graduation. And i do think kids should be forced in schools, they just have to have some choice and control after a certain age.For me it was 14, but that differs so its impossible to please everybody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _$0 salary and no equity (you're supposed to be compensated in experience)_ \- The experience is worth more than the market salary would pay for the work. In many cases it leads to preferential social treatment and occasionally the social connections you make on the job will turn out very valuable later.

 _no benefits other than vacation and sick time: no insurance, for example_ \- However, depending on the quality of the employer, you may get access to people and facilities of considerable value.

 _no possibility of promotion or raise, ever_ \- It's more like the opposite: strong likelihood of automatic promotion regardless of merit.

 _no job description: just do what you're told_ \- Not unlike a startup, where your job description is meaningless. You do what needs to be done.

 _micromanaging boss asks about project status every hour_ \- That depends on the boss and how well you've accomplished past projects.

 _strict hours, starting at 8:30AM sharp_ \- True but you often leave early.

 _if you're late even a few minutes, your boss send you to her boss. rigid workweek, but then you're expected to work from home a ton. open-desk seating, not even a cube, with a hard chair_ \- Those things vary considerably between employers.

 _the work is boring and demeaning, like adding digits and copying text_ \- That's not true. Often the employer will expect you to demonstrate your creativity. Furthermore much of the boring work can be done in groups and you often get plenty of breaks where you're free to use your time as you wish.

 _all your useless work gets thrown away_ \- As it should be. The useful stuff will be saved. Depending on your employer and family situation you may get rewarded for good work in ways that far exceed the market value.

 _if you want to use a computer, you can buy one or just scribble on paper_ \- Again not so. In fact many employers provide computers even in situations when they may not be necessary for the work.

 _no supplies room, either_ \- That depends on the employer.

 _my daughter can't drive, so commute was complicated_ \- Generally speaking these kinds of employers are often close to home and many provide transportation. Also carpooling is frequent in this line of work.

 _can't even put the job on your resume until you work there for a decade_ \- This is backwards: it's good to put on your resume along with specific accomplishments up until you've been there for a decade at which time it's value is reduced.

<comment><USER7> 1\. So do many other "cv jobs", but they don't take more then a decade to do it. 2\. Like in any other job. 3\. True. But automatic promotion doesn't make one proud. 4\. Here it's the biggest difference. As an entrepreneur you're training in being able to know what needs to be done. This teaches you the opposite: everything is equally important just because you're told so 5\. Not really. In any other job you have at least a few hours of independence. Not in this one. 6\. True 7\. Not really, at least not he open-desk seating part. 8\. Ha ha. Creativity... really. 9\. All work = useless work. No work is ever used except for evaluation purposes. Ever. Ever. God, i'm depressed already. 10\. Could be, haven't been employed in the field for a while. 11\. true 12\. true 13\. Most people have exactly the same in their resume, so its real value is nil.

I'd like to elaborate a bit on the creativity part. Most school is a lot like an assembly line - the cheapest way to teach thousands of children necessary things. This is not bad, time and money constraints are real. But in this framework you can't afford to encourage true creativity, simply because to be creative you need: 1. a "space" in which to be creative and 2. not to be evaluated by classic means. School environment provides neither.

<comment><USER6> I'll grant that many schools (and workplaces) are run by people who take that attitude towards creativity and I think the general lack of parental involvement is the biggest cause. I know one teacher who quit the profession when not a single parent cared about attending her second grade class conference.

However there are some good schools out there that do value creativity. It's unfortunate that parents can't or won't insist there be more of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Equating education with work is kind of silly. I mean, being silly is obviously the point of the post, but there's no need to be so morose about school. Education is incredibly valuable, and receiving it for free is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, millions of people pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for it after they get done with the free stuff.

Plus, summer vacation is totally awesome.

<comment><USER9> Maybe it's a coincidence that the best boss I've ever worked for was home schooled, maybe it's not.

<comment><USER10> It's funny you mention that. I was home schooled, and now that I'm in college, I find that it's less than I expected (plus I feel much more prepared than I think I would had I gone to a 'traditional' school). Hopefully I'd make a good boss, too.

We didn't have very rigid class hours, most material was self-taught (especially in high school), and work and studies were done when practical, when I made time for them, not when an arbitrary structure told me that it was time to study this subject. For example: I found that I'm much more mathematically adept later in the day, so I would do the next day's math lesson the night before.

Another interesting thing to note is that I was not micromanaged, as is the case in the article... come to think of it, maybe I'm not as prepared for 'the real world' (corporate) as I thought. :)

<comment><USER11> I'd find it very interesting to find out about anyone else's experiences linking home-schooling and startups (or, what makes for an entrepreneurial mindset..)

I was home-schooled till 11, when I entered school in a class a year ahead of my age. that was 12 years ago, now i'm running a startup (our 2nd employee starts next week)

I've been thankful to my mum ever since for spending the time with me when I was younger - it definately gave me a head-start with learning and a different perspective from many people. Anyone else have home-schooling experiences they relate to entrepreneurship?

<comment><USER10> I agree about their being a good correlation between homeschooling and entrepreneurship. It might be that homeschooling encourages independence and initiative, or it might just be that the public school system is designed to produce good employees.

I'm the oldest in a family of 6 - all home schooled. My brother and I both have an entrepreneurial streak in us (my brother sold candy at the Jr. High near our house after school to raise money for his X-Box fund. He raised enough to buy it at 11, with no help from parents. He even bought the candy on his own).

However my other brother is leaving for the Air Force Academy in a few days - he wants to end up in politics somewhere. To me it seems like the military and political careers are opposite to entrepreneurship. I guess we're not all the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hear lots of seven-year-olds are accepting exciting opportunities to work now in the garment industry.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not that funny if you realize that schools are institutions for indoctrination and for imposing obedience.

</comment><comment><USER14> Like when I was 10 years old, I now sit in my designated area eagerly staring at the clock until it's time to go.

</comment><comment><USER15> Funny, but too lightweight for #1

<comment><AUTHOR> Do not think so, this is really important and sad. Taming of the wild animals starts at school, and then we wonder why so few are growing up entrepreneurs?

<comment><USER15> It is much, much easier to vote something up that says a simple profound truth than anything complicated for many different reasons. It is bad when easy to vote things dominate the homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ironic, aren't you the one who posted a flash game the other day and it made to #1?

<comment><USER15> ;) I can only work within the system...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I believe the author is arguing against instructionism, and for constructionism.

</comment><comment><USER17> > But millions of other seven-year-olds accepted identical offers.

Well played.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like the way open-desk seating is regarded as a bad thing, surely it's better than being sat in a cube all day?

<comment><USER19> He should have mentioned: "Its an open desk area where talking to other employees is highly discouraged"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> that is a pretty ridiculous offer . . . that's why I enrolled my 7 year old in business school, and now that she has an mba the six-figure offers are rolling in . . . with equity of course.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hows about my new job:

$0 salary. In fact you spend money to work. Its a privilege. You can't quit.

You can't act on your frustrations or the government might intervene.

You have to deal with a lot of shit.

Its always noisy.

You need to get a second job. Usually the second job is a vacation from your first job.

The only time you can go on vacation is when you get someone to take over for you at your expense.

There are no sick days, if you are sick you have to come up with creative ways to do the job and not get anyone at work sick. Also you have to work.

Sometimes you get the job. Sometimes the job is given to you, you can't reject. The government ensures that you take the job whether you like it or not.

You might be offered the position multiple times. See previous point.

There is an eventual payoff... But it is not guaranteed.

The only real up side is looking for the job is REALLY fun.

<comment><USER21> > _The only real up side is looking for the job is REALLY fun._

... and you get compensated in experience. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No.

</comment><comment><USER23> heheh very funny!!!

</comment><comment><USER24> this isn't hacker news, it shouldn't even be here.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish we could see who voted on what so I could henceforth have no respect for those people.

<comment><USER26> Not a bad idea. What if the front page was dynamically generated on a per user basis depending on whose opinion you respected. After typing this I realize it sounds similar to friendfeed. "A dynamic front page of people who you want to listen to"

FWIW, I voted up on this article so you can stop listening to me.

<comment><USER27> Also sounds like [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfac...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfact-ultimate-social-verifier.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Quake's Fast Inverse Square Root - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fast-inverse-square-root/

<comment><USER2> IIRC (it's been a long time) the Cray 1 could do inverse, multiply, and square root in single cycle instructions. Isqrt would take two cycles as wood divide. (Back to the rocking chair.)

<comment><USER3> Actually it didn't <http://klausler.com/cray2.txt> it had a command for a square root approximation and a command to iteratively get closer to the real square root.

But even if a certain computer did compute a square root (or even an approximation) in a single cycle, that would mean CPU speed was reduced by slowing down the clock to enable a more complex action to complete within the timeframe of a single cycle, and other simpler actions like adding/subtracting/moving memory we're sacrificed in its favor.

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily. The square root hardware could be heavily pipelined to get each stage short enough for one cycle. This increases latency, but lets you keep a one-per-cycle throughput without slowing down the clock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's really easy to understand if you know what the Newton Method for computing roots of a polynomial is.

<comment><USER6> Its easy to understand the algorithm. But that initial guess there is where the magic is. Thats what makes the algorithm work so efficiently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool, but if you really want to blow your mind, look at some of the tricks for diagonallizing Hessians!

</comment><comment><USER8> John Carmack FTW.

<comment><USER9> Carmack or Michael Abrash? Read Graphics Programming Black Book ( [http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Abrashs-Graphics- Programming-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Abrashs-Graphics-Programming- Special/dp/1576101746) )

Abrash did amazing things with assembly to get Quake to run on the 486.

I don't know if Carmack, Abrash, or someone at SGI (it's in OpenGL source code too) came up with it; but it seems like witch craft to me.

<comment><USER10> The _486_!? Wow

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I actually played it (choppily) for a while on my 486.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rural DSL or how to take advantage of the Universal Service Fund? - <AUTHOR>

Since my father passed the duty of taking care of my mother's internet connectivity has fell to me. She lives in a rural area where she is apparently about 1,000 ft^2 too far away from the local DSLAM for DSL. Her only options seem to be 3G from Sprint (for some reason the signal from at&t and verizon isn't strong enough for connectivity) or satellite connectivity which is incredibly lag prone, and unreliable with heavy cloud coverage.<p>How are other people handling this? I know there's a federal fund for providing access to people in rural areas called the USF that anybody with a telephone or a cell phone pays into. Has anybody else had luck wielding this power to level-up connectivity in the sticks? Got any pointers? <comment><USER2> I had a friend who had to deal with this problem. He harassed his local phone company every week for years. He looked into what a DSLAM would cost and offered to buy it for them. He pleaded that all he wanted to do was give them more money. Then one day, one of their reps told him he was never going to get it, so he stepped it up a notch.

When he felt like he had nothing to lose, he wrote a script to spam them with tickets repeatedly every day, which was completely legal. When they complained about it, he told them all they had to do was get him DSL and the tickets would stop. A week later they told him they'd give him DSL.</comment>


Singapore's open data portal - <AUTHOR> http://beta.data.gov.sg/ <comment><USER2> I lived in Singapore for almost 5 years and I live London now. Everytime I see something like this about Singapore, I ask myself when I will be in Singapore again. It is truly amazing country, city, island.</comment>


Probiotic Beer Coming Your Way - <AUTHOR> https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2017-07-28/burp-singapore-scientists-hope-for-probiotic-beer-hit <comment><USER2> As long as it doesn't ruin taste, sure, having an excuse to drink beer sounds awesome.

The low alcohol content makes it seem like a good session beer too, although I don't know if you can, or would want to, "sesh" probiotics...

</comment><comment><USER3> _One_ strain? (L. paracasei L26)

I get five in my yogurt.</comment>


Pruning Dynamic Rebuilds with libabigail - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.mongodb.com/post/pruning-dynamic-rebuilds-with-libabigail <comment><USER2> I sometimes think that we are optimizing our tools and our process using the wrong objective function.

We put a lot of effort into reducing overall build times, but I would argue that the average time to find an error (if there is one) is more important than the average time to get confidence that the change is good.

In my custom build tool-chain I try to compile and run the unit tests first -- even running the static analysis unit checkout -- before I compile the whole application.

NASA have a similar (but more refined) approach -- they test each change in widening ripples through the dependency graph.</comment>


Ask HN: What resources do you use to pick stocks to invest in? - <AUTHOR> Curious to hear what resources (sites, apps, APIs, etc) HN users use when researching stocks they are interested in purchasing.<p>I've only recently started to invest more actively, and find myself making decisions based on what friends are talking about, news articles, and Wikipedia (to gain an understanding of what the company is actually working on/building). This is along with more typical resources like Yahoo Finance just to see the daily price and graphs. <comment><USER2> The only right answer is "As a retail investor, I'm not picking individual stocks."

Accept that I don't have, you don't have, and with a very few exceptions, an individual for whom this isn't an all-consuming more-than-full-time occupation basically will never have, proprietary knowledge (an "edge") that's not already priced in.

Spend an hour reading Matt Levine, then subscribe and read his new posts for a few months. Start with this one:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-09/retail- vo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-09/retail-voters-and- insider-traders)

While reasonable people can debate index funds vs. actively-managed funds, essentially all thoughtful market participants have realized that the days when hobbyist investors could add alpha have passed.

If you're asking for good sites to investigate ETFs, Yahoo Finance is, miraculously, still great.

<comment><USER3> What about an edge for someone with deep technology knowledge ?

<comment><USER4> You're competing against PHD rocket scientists employed by people who buy data centres milliseconds away from exchanges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I first started investing in crypto in college then ETFs for my 401(k). For crypto I used Coinbase and GDAX for trading and [https://www.worldcoinindex.com/](https://www.worldcoinindex.com/) to see how various cryptocurrencies were doing. I used /r/ethtrader/ and /r/ethereum for news on ethereum. For ETFs I compared their 5-yr, 3-yr, 1-yr, and 3-mo performance percents. I started looking into individual stocks, and I've mostly used Morningstar, but it's pretty overwhelming and hard to compare stocks and know what to invest in using all that data. I also don't know how they rank stocks. Am I supposed to just trust them? Feels wrong. I don't have a good strategy on how to invest in stocks wisely, so it kinda discourages me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seeking Alpha is good. Get a subscription to WSJ, which will inform you of larger marketplace trends and make you a better investor in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER7> Quarterly reports.</comment>


VB Goes Mobile: Announcing "Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools - RTW - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbteam/archive/2010/11/29/vb-goes-mobile-announcing-visual-basic-for-windows-phone-developer-tools-rtw-quot.aspx <comment><USER2> For the love of god, let it die?

<comment><USER3> Relax, this ain't your grandpa's BASIC.</comment></comment>


Announcing Google Chart Tools - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/02/announcing-google-chart-tools.html <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that it's against the Google Visualization terms of service to self-host the javascript. It's not a big deal if you need the pure JS stuff, but anything which generates images is sending the data to google's servers. Be careful exactly what you're using if you're displaying sensitive data.

</comment><comment><USER3> This really does make life a lot simpler for displaying data of pretty much any sort.

 _On a side note: it would have been awesome if they offered the charts with the XKCD look to it._

</comment><comment><USER4> If you dealing with maths in your webpages the newest additions include TeX. My life just got simpler.

<comment><USER5> It's been around for a while, ever since Google Docs added insert formul/equations.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/9pxpm/looks_like_googl...](http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/9pxpm/looks_like_google_docs_added_latex_support/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have been using this for my App Engine powered CRM application. Very useful.

Was even able to come up with pipeline charts, by tweeking the bar chart. You can read about it here.. [http://ifreetools.blogspot.com/2009/11/whats- cooking-sales-o...](http://ifreetools.blogspot.com/2009/11/whats-cooking- sales-opportunities.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sadly, they chose to demonstrate the capability using exploded 3D pie charts-- a truly terrible way to present data.

</comment><comment><USER8> I didn't know they'd added TeX formulae; that's awesome. It's going to be a _very_ long time before we see near-universal MathML adoption, but this pretty much eliminates the need for it.

Whoever came up with the 3D pie charts needs to be locked up, however.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am still looking for the official Excel-like step-by-step wizard to create charts.

</comment><comment><USER9> All this stuff already existed - this is just a post rebranding it as a single project

</comment><comment><USER10> Ahh, very nice. I've been wanting more customisability from Google Charts for a while. It was between SVG charts and Google Charts and I think Google won.

Side note: How many times has Google made a reference to XKCD? Haha

<comment><USER11> I don't know about publicly on the internet, but their offices are almost plastered with XKCD comics. There are lots of them on the walls in common areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hrm... it may be time to use this for langpop.com...</comment>


PickTrace (YC S15) Helps Farmers Manage Their Harvest - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/yc-backed-picktrace-helps-farmers-manage-their-harvest/

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch, guys!

PickTrace is solving one of those massive problems that I assumed was already solved by technology, until I spent a week on a family-owned farm a few summers ago.

The amount of labor to track the crop yield and the time-tracking/pay of your workforce is staggering. There are some really expensive solutions out there for huge farms, but the 400+ acre farm I visited used manual scales, clipboards, and a huge team of "counters" \- essentially verifying and QAing the whole process.

<comment><USER3> Thank you! That is exactly the problem that instigated the creation of PickTrace. It is a problem that is uniform across almost all high value crops. It takes days to calculate payroll and often times leads to inaccuracies and mistakes. PickTrace sends this data from the field to a web server where the farmer can view analytics, review timecards, productivity, and complete payroll in real-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey all! I'm one of the two founders of PickTrace! Our system helps keep track of labor and harvest for agriculture, we would be happy to answer any and all questions!

<comment><USER4> Do you have an email I could contact you on? I can't see one in your profile.

<comment><USER3> just updated my "about" to have my email: austin.steed at picktrace dot com (sorry don't want bots to pick it up)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> looks like an interesting project. we have literally hundreds of thousands of acres of labor intensive agriculture(fruit trees) around where i live and this is a big problem to solve. congrats!

have you reached out to companies like stemilt at all? or just growing organically for now?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the comment! Yes we have reached out to a few companies similar to Stemilt and are always looking to expand! We find that larger operations are very excited by our analytics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't believe this didn't already exist. Grats!</comment>